Intimate Rock Portraits

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Photographing the legend's of rock n' roll's golden era of the late 1960's and early 1970's, Tom Gundelfinger O'Neal had unrivalled access to some of the icons of popular music.
 Showcasing a selection of his striking work at the National Press Club in Washington this month, O'Neal's portraits of Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, B.B King and Janis Joplin hark back to an era when rock music was still considered counter-culture.
 Witness to Hendrix's famous guitar burning at the legendary Monterey music festival of 1967 and the Rolling Stones notoriously debauched 1972 tour of North America, O'Neal also managed to capture more reflective artists such as Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136758/Tom-ONeal-Photographers-amazing-intimate-portraits-popular-musics-golden-era.html#ixzz1tT4KFByu

vintage burlesque

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This collection of vintage posters proves that the titillating art form of burlesque has been popular for decades.

The Library of Congress in the US has opened its archive of around 2,100 posters illustrating live entertainment from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.

And the series shows that people have always embraced the weird, wonderful and wacky – and saucy.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136620/Meet-original-Dita-Von-Teese-Saucy-vintage-burlesque-posters-display.html#ixzz1tT1D4wDI

Ryan & Farrah

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"She’s married. Her name is Majors. Her husband is Lee Majors, who starred in The Six Million Dollar Man. It is the autumn of 1979 and Lee is in Toronto for a movie. I’m there visiting my daughter, Tatum, who’s shooting a film with Richard Burton. She is 15.

I knew by the way she was kissing me that she had made up her mind...

Lee is a companionable big guy, worth at least five-and-a-half million. We fly home together, the limo drops us off and there’s this beautiful girl waiting for him. She’s delightful, full of childlike warmth. She’s vibrant and wholesome – refreshing in this town. I’ve just met Farrah, the woman who will become the love of my life.
I had gone to their home for dinner that first night, and the next night, too. That second night they start to talk about their relationship. He’s a man of few words, a monosyllabic cowboy type. Farrah is more open, and she has no compunction talking about their problems.

She says when they were staying in Nevada, he was in a successful Western series with Barbara Stanwyck and Linda Evans called The Big Valley. (This was before Farrah’s fame through the hit television Charlie’s Angels and the poster that had made her the fantasy of every teenage boy in America.)

Their son Redmond O'Neal at home

We first kiss at a party thrown by Swifty Lazar, the talent agent. Gregory Peck is there; Anne and Kirk Douglas; Burt Lancaster and other stars of that era. She arrives at Lazar’s fabulous home in jeans, boots and a snakeskin jacket. She sparkles. Kirk Douglas tries to get her attention by broadening his smile until we can see his molars."

Ryan O’Neal 2012. Both Of Us, by Ryan O’Neal, is published by The Robson Press
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2136607/To-hell-Charlies-Angel-Ryan-ONeals-breathtaking-honesty-tumultuous-life-Farrah-Fawcett.html#ixzz1tSxZUoI0

Paparazzo Ron Galella's Long Awaited Collection

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Legendary paparazzi photographer Ron Galella is releasing a book featuring hundreds of iconic images of celebrities such as Jackie O, Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol and Brigette Bardot.
He was dubbed the 'paparazzo extraordinaire' by Newsweek - a name that has become the title of his new book, released this month.

Whether it was snapping Michael Jackson and Brooke Shields at the Shrine Auditorium in 1984, Jackie O without her sunglasses on, or Brigitte Bardot in a bikini in St-Tropez, the now 81-year-old was the pioneer of high-stakes, stake-out paparazzi photography, which ultimately lead to the former First Lady filing a restraining order against him.

Paparazzo Extraordinaire, published by German publisher Hatje Cantz, features images of Frank Sinatra, Micheal Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigette Bardot, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, John Travolta and Andy Warhol



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2135634/King-Paparazzi-Ron-Galella-restraining-order-Jackie-O-releases-book-iconic-celebrity-images.html#ixzz1tCTqYJG4

Victoria's Secret 1979

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With their Seventies perms, overly blushed cheekbones and deep tans, the models in this 1979 Victoria's Secret catalogue are virtually unrecognisable from today's glossy Angels.


The unearthed Victoria's Secret catalogue shows young ladies lounging in bed wearing marabou slippers and relatively demure knee-length slips. Flaunting body shapes more akin to those of 'real' women, they can be seen reading books together, and chatting in front of still life paintings in chintzy, dated sets.


The old catalogue shows how a woman might actually look wearing the garments advertised, rather than depicting a mostly unattainable beauty ideal for women, as seen in the catalogues today.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2135009/Marabou-slippers-mahogany-tans-knee-length-slips-What-Victoria-s-Secret-models-looked-like-1979.html#ixzz1t5NmawED

Foot Binding in China

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For almost a millennium, the practice of foot binding was prevalent across Chinese society, starting with the wealthier classes but over the years spreading down through urban and then poorer rural communities. Now the ancient, some say barbaric, practice is almost gone.


Isolated from the country's key cultural and administrative hubs, the area around Liuyi, a village of about 2,000 people in southern China's Yunnan province, was one of the last places in the country to end the tradition.

The feet of girls as young as 5 would be broken and bound tightly with cotton strips, forcing their four smallest toes to gradually fold under the soles to create a so-called 3-inch golden lotus, once idealized as the epitome of beauty.


The process would take many years and would lead to a lifetime of labored movement, as well as a regular need to rebind the feet.

The practice fell out of favor at the turn of the 20th century, viewed as an antiquated and shameful part of imperialist Chinese culture, and was officially banned soon after. But in rural areas, the feet of some young girls were still being bound into the early 1950s. In Liuyi, the practice didn't stop until around 1957.

1950s Mens' Magazines

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The June 1959 issue of Girl Watcher magazine appears to be a typical Fifties pinup publication.


But closer examination reveals it to be a highly sexualized attempt at parodying the satirical Mad Magazine.
The articles go on to advise: 'How to start a Girl collection,' and 'More ambitious Girl Watchers find it intriguing to bring home a specimen or two.'


Published in the same decade as Don Sauers' famous The Girl Watcher's Guide, a book instructing men on 'mastering the once-over,' the magazine's original intent was for comical effect.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2134463/Stalking-girl-Creepy-tips-collect-pretty-girls-unearthed-humorous-mens-magazine-1950s.html#ixzz1t4AFjVir

Was Albert Einstein the world's worst husband?

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Well the man can't be everything! ... right?

Despite his innumerable professional successes, Einstein found it impossible to sustain a successful personal life.


In his book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson describes how Albert Einstein found maintaining a harmonious love life a battle he would never win.

In fact, so pragmatic was Einstein's approach to love, that when he found his 11 year marriage to fellow scientist Mileva Maric was floundering, he issued a list of outrageous rules that he believed would allow the two to remain together for the sake of the children.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2133922/Was-Einstein-worlds-worst-husband-Wife-ordered-room-tidy-serve-meals-day--expect-NO-affection--stop-talking-demands-it.html#ixzz1svfzarDG

Holocaust Remembrance

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FULLY COMPASSIONATE God on high:


To our six million brothers and sisters
murdered because they were Jews,
grant clear and certain rest with You
in the lofty heights of the sacred and pure
whose brightness shines like the very glow of heaven.

Source of mercy:

Forever enfold them in the embrace of Your wings;
secure their souls in eternity.

Adonai: they are Yours.

They will rest in peace.

Amen.

Playtime Free of Safety Inspectors

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These photos are hilarious! Children at play on playgrounds unfettered by rules or rails. See more hilarity at the LINK.

American Bandstand

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 Dick Clark, the always youthful television host and tireless entrepreneur who helped bring rock 'n' roll into the mainstream on "American Bandstand," and later produced and hosted a vast range of programming from game shows to the year-end countdown from Times Square on "New Year's Rockin' Eve," has died. He was 82.

His life in pictures: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/dick-clark-dies-at-82-slideshow/

Titianic Love Story

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Ida Straus, one of the wealthiest and possibly one of the oldest women on board, was not among the survivors on the RMS Carpathia when it pulled into New York's Pier 54 carrying 705 survivors of the Titanic disaster. Neither was her husband Isidor, owner of Macy's department store and a former U.S. congressman. Not until the following day did eyewitnesses describe the "most remarkable exhibition of love and devotion" shown by the couple in the chaos of that hellish night, a love and devotion that led to both their deaths.

Isidor, witnesses said, was offered a seat in lifeboat number four but insisted that women—and younger men—be saved before him. And Ida refused to leave without him. "I will not be separated from my husband," she said. "As we have lived so will we die together."

D Day Doggie

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Bing


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He was one of the first dogs to be dropped behind enemy lines with British paratroopers.



From the moment the two-year-old Alsatian-collie cross put his paws on Normandy soil (albeit after a tangle with a tree) he was ready for action.


Anywhere there was trouble, even after he was wounded by mortar fire, he was there to sniff it out.


More...'All hell broke loose': Duke of Edinburgh gives first account of his role in 1941 naval battle that sunk Italian cruisers


Pictured: The last Dambuster meets modern day airmen from squadron he helped immortalised 69 years ago

And when something didn't seem quite right, he would freeze and point towards the danger with his nose.


During rest breaks, he kept watch over sleeping British troops; on the move, he pioneered the advance through potential danger zones.


His fearless excursions through perilous terrain and behind enemy lines were credited with saving hundreds of servicemen from ambush, later earning him the PDSA's Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131034/Bing-World-War-Two-parachuting-dog.html#ixzz1sMOfpmT4

Vintage Kitty

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We can't get enough of comedy cats and photos have emerged which show that even in the 1870s humans loved nothing more than snapping their four-legged friends in all sorts of bizarre poses.

Ninety Years Ago Taking a Risk Was Part of the Fun

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1935: Wicksteed's slide was made to a new design out of steel and wood, with a curve at the end to slow children down


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With their rickety ladders leading to a steep descent with little or nothing to hold on to, the wooden slides of 1922 would have today’s health and safety zealots scrambling for their clipboards.


But the children, in their school ties, caps and shorts, seem perfectly happy to ride down the polished wooden planks.

These scenes were captured shortly after Britain’s first slide was constructed – and is a world away from the far smaller metal slide with side rails found in the same playground today.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130923/Historians-discover-worlds-childrens-slide-built-90-years-ago-plank-wood.html#ixzz1sM9hNHBP

MM

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I would scarcely think it possible that we have not seen them all -- but every month or so we are regaled with new photographs of Marilyn Monroe ... here are two when you Click my topic for your LINK.

Titanic Headlines

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On Tuesday, April 16, 1912 - the day after the Titanic met its tragic fate - the Daily Mail told the nation: 'She sank at 2.20 in the afternoon (7.20 in the afternoon). No lives were lost.'


These, of course, were the days before rolling news and mobile communications. Details remained hazy long after the world's largest ship went down, the scale of the disaster was not yet known and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic struggled to relieve readers of agonising suspense.

One article spoke of how 'bewildering reports published in New York of wireless messages received concerning the collision have befogged even the scanty details obtainable'.

By the next morning, however, the great loss suffered had become all too clear.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129197/Daily-Mail-archives-reveal-Britain-learned-Titanic-disaster.html#ixzz1s2PekKiM

Forty Years of Royals at Rest

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1920s Mugshots of Australian Murderers and Conmen

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Dressed in their finest suits and ties with their top hats cocked towards the camera, these men and women seem to be posing for expensive portraits.



But behind their tidy appearances are guilty eyes that hide some of the most sinister crimes policeman of the day had dealt with.


For these are mugshots of Australian convicts who were dealt with by police for chilling murders, robberies burglaries and other crimes in the 1920s and 1930s.

The vintage police slides have been released by the New South Wales Police Department as part of an exhibition at The Sydney Justice & Police Museum.



They are a fascinating insight into the crimes that were being committed at the time and the characters of the accused


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129646/Vintage-police-mugshots-1920s-Australian-criminals-hide-sinister-crimes.html#ixzz1s1mSqxTm
 

Titanic

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A Photo History.

Evolution of the Computer on TV

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Seemingly overnight, computers progressively evolve in form, function, and design. And with a starring role on network sitcoms, dramas, and children’s programming, they’ve changed before television viewers’ very eyes. Today, we can’t help but laugh at the bulky, dull-looking computers of reruns past—as a snarky computer salesman once told Homer Simpson, “That technology is three months old. Only suckers buy out-of-date machines. You’re not a sucker, are you, sir?” From the archaic hulking supercomputers in The Twilight Zone to Carrie Bradshaw’s Mac laptop turned accessory on Sex and the City, VF.com looks back at how this technology has evolved on-screen.

Brigitte Bardot

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The Temptress of St. Tropez

Brigitte Bardot turned her back on stardom in 1973, at the height of her beauty—and went off to start her real life. As an exhibition of photographs of Bardot hits L.A., the curator, Henry-Jean Servat, gets a rare invitation to the St. Tropez sanctuary of the French legend, who expresses no regrets about her sex-kitten years and no interest in her image, but a total commitment to her cause.

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Mad Men Fashion

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In Mad Men’s fifth season, the mod side of the 1960s has officially commenced, what with mini-dresses, nude lips, bouffants, and Vivier flats. The party scene for Don’s 40th birthday, in particular, allowed costume designer Janie Bryant to conceive of the episode like “a painting”—a single ensemble scene to inaugurate all the swirling, colorful patterns that exemplified the kicky 60s. (The men, for the most part, stuck to skinny gray suits and tie bars.) Here, some of season five’s most notable looks, with details on the styles and insights at the LINK.


Betty Draper Style: From Grace Kelly to Jackie O
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/04/betty-draper-style-1960s-grace-kelly-jackie-o#slide=1

Jewel-Tone Joan ~ office sex-kitten

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/04/mad-men-joan-office-fashion-photos#slide=1

Peggy’s style evolution through Mad Men’s seasons

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/04/peggy-olson-mad-men-fashion-photos#slide=1

An Animated History

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At the link is an animated representation of war in April in 1862. 

Watch unfolding events in one of the most intriguing wars of human history ... the American Civil War.

Glow in Dark Civil War Wounds

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By the spring of 1862, a year into the American Civil War, Major General Ulysses S. Grant had pushed deep into Confederate territory along the Tennessee River. In early April, he was camped at Pittsburg Landing, near Shiloh, Tennessee, waiting for Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s army to meet up with him.

On the morning of April 6, Confederate troops based out of nearby Corinth, Mississippi, launched a surprise offensive against Grant’s troops, hoping to defeat them before the second army arrived. Grant’s men, augmented by the first arrivals from the Ohio, managed to hold some ground, though, and establish a battle line anchored with artillery. Fighting continued until after dark, and by the next morning, the full force of the Ohio had arrived and the Union outnumbered the Confederates by more than 10,000.

The Union troops began forcing the Confederates back, and while a counterattack stopped their advance it did not break their line. Eventually, the Southern commanders realized they could not win and fell back to Corinth until another offensive in August.

All told, the fighting at the Battle of Shiloh left more than 16,000 soldiers wounded and more 3,000 dead, and neither federal or Confederate medics were prepared for the carnage.

Some of the Shiloh soldiers sat in the mud for two rainy days and nights waiting for the medics to get around to them. As dusk fell the first night, some of them noticed something very strange: their wounds were glowing, casting a faint light into the darkness of the battlefield. Even stranger, when the troops were eventually moved to field hospitals, those whose wounds glowed had a better survival rate and had their wounds heal more quickly and cleanly than their unilluminated brothers-in-arms. The seemingly protective effect of the mysterious light earned it the nickname “Angel’s Glow.”

In 2001, almost one hundred and forty years after the battle, seventeen-year-old Bill Martin was visiting the Shiloh battlefield with his family. When he heard about the glowing wounds, he asked his mother – a microbiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service who had studied luminescent bacteria that lived in soil – about it.

“So you know, he comes home and, ‘Mom, you’re working with a glowing bacteria. Could that have caused the glowing wounds?’” Martin told Science Netlinks. “And so, being a scientist, of course I said, ‘Well, you can do an experiment to find out.’”

And that’s just what Bill did.

What did Bill uncover about the source of the glowing wounds!  Read on and find out ...

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/122477#ixzz1rbxnqiew
--brought to you by mental_floss!

Tale of Survival in Titanic Diary

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news of Titanic reaches NYC

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In despair, and left with no option, Thayer decided to jump. 'I was pushed out and then sucked down. The cold was terrific. The shock of the water took the breath out of my lungs,' he says of the terrifying plunge.

'Down and down, I went, spinning in all directions. Swimming as hard as I could in the direction which I thought to be away from the ship, I finally came up with my lungs bursting, but not having taken any water.'

After latching on to a life boat, Thayer watched as the ship's passengers battled against the inevitable. 'We could see groups of the almost 1,500 people still aboard, clinging in clusters of bunches like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly, as the great after-part of the ship, 250 feet of it, rose into the sky, till it reached a 65 or 70-degree angle.'

He describes being haunted by the horrifying cries of the people who slowly died around him - and his own survival.

'It sounded like locusts on a midsummer night in the woods. This terrible cry lasted for 20 or 30 minutes, gradually dying away, as one after another could no longer withstand the cold and exposure,' he said.

Thayer said the most poignant part of the catastrophe was that the lifeboats, some of which were 'only partially loaded', did not return to rescue those crying for help in the water.

He describes how several hundred more people could have been saved had the boats, which were only four or five hundred yards away, turned back.

Although Thayer escaped the disaster, his life ended tragically. Five years after he wrote his memoir, he committed suicide following the tragic death of his son in WWII.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126944/Titanic-survivor-John-B-Jack-Thayer-III-reveals-horrifying-cries-dying-victims.html#ixzz1rbvzNwuj

Titanic Diary

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On April 15, 1912, John B. “Jack” Thayer III was the 17-year-old heir to a Pennsylvania railroad fortune, riding in first class on the most spectacular ship of its era — the Titanic. He barely survived the disaster, and his account of the night riveted salons in the following decades. Finally, in 1940, he wrote down what happened, printing 500 copies for his family. Five years later, after the tragic loss of his son in WWII, Thayer committed suicide, and his story was mostly forgotten.

Recently, Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, found one of the original copies of Thayer’s book in his family’s library inscribed to his great-grandfather. Now the miraculous account will be printed by New York publisher Thornwillow Press, as a limited edition for the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking (available at thornwillow.com).


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/forgotten_journal_reveals_pR1m3TIN5sS85dWhTT91HK#ixzz1rW3M0lq5

Bette Davis!

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Ever since the dawn of celebrity, actresses have been lauded in the press more for their glamour and beauty than their talent.

But once in a while, a serious star is born whose depth transcends the superficiality of image and appearance, and rarely has an actor epitomised that quality like screen legend, Bette Davis.

Today, to mark what would be her 104th birthday, LIFE has published a series of photographs taken of the icon in 1939, some of which have never been seen.

This iconic, indomitable actress, born Ruth Elisabeth Davis, was only 30 years old having already stunned audiences with her powerhouse performances and earned herself two Oscars for 1935's Dangerous and 1938's Jezebel.

Davis' 1934 portrayal of Somerset Maugham's unlikeable Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage, 'probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress.'

And though others including Katherine Hepburn and Meryl Streep are celebrated with similar praise for incredible acting chops, Davis remains one of the most thrilling presences to have graced the silver screen.

The seminal figure appeared in movies from the 1930's through to the Sixties, winning a total of ten Academy Award nominations along the way that recognised her astonishing ability to embody both the cruelest characters and the most romantic heroines.

Love, love love, her!

Titanic Postcards

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For nearly a century this rare collection of postcards mourning the loss of the Titanic - rushed out in the aftermath of the sinking - have only been seen by a privileged few.

Now these striking images will adorn memorabilia after a ten-year search reunited them with their original publisher Bamforth’s - allowing them to appear on licensed products for the first time since 1912.
The company is mainly remembered as makers of saucy seaside postcards featuring scantily clad women and jokes about mother-in-laws.

In an age when cameras were still a rich man’s toy Bamforth’s also recorded important chapters in England’s social history.

So within weeks of the sinking of the Titanic on April 15 1912 Bamforth & Co, based in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, published six postcards commemorating the tragic event.

The set, known to collectors as the Nearer My God To Me series, shows a saintly woman in a flowing white gown posed against a backdrop of the sinking.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126124/Lost-postcards-mourning-loss-Titanic-released-original-company-detective-work-collector.html#ixzz1rNWBYCsQ

Ghettos Under the Nazis

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During World War II, the Nazis established more than 400 ghettos for the purpose of isolating and controlling the Jews.

By Susan D. Glazer


The term "ghetto" originated in sixteenth-century Venice where it was used to refer to the Jewish quarter. As medieval restrictions on Jewish residence spread across Italy and beyond to central and western Europe, the word "ghetto" followed, referring to the section of the city where Jews were forced to live. The following article chronicles the Nazis' use of the medieval concept of ghettos to isolate Jews during World War II.

During World War II, the Nazis established more than 400 ghettos in order to isolate Jews from the non-Jewish population and from neighboring Jewish communities. The Germans regarded the establishment of ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews. The assumption behind this separation was to stop the Jews, viewed by the Nazis as an inferior race, from mixing with and thus degrading the superior Aryan race. Nazi high officials also believed that the Jews would succumb to the unfavorable living conditions of the ghetto, including lack of food, water, and living space. Furthermore, the ghettos served as round-up centers that made it more convenient to exterminate large numbers of the Jewish population later.

The ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe--primarily Poland--were often closed off by walls, barbed-wire fences, or gates. Ghettos were extremely crowded and unsanitary. Starvation, chronic food and fuel shortages, and severe winter weather led to repeated outbreaks of epidemics and to a high mortality rate. Ghettoization, however, was seen as a temporary situation, and in many places the ghettos existed only for a brief time. With the implementation of the "Final Solution" in 1942, the Germans began to destroy the ghettos through deportation of the Jewish occupants to forced-labor and extermination camps.

The first ghetto was established in Lodz, Poland, on February 8, 1940. Approximately 155,000 Jews, almost one-third of the city's total population, were forced to live in the Lodz ghetto. As Lodz was a center of textile production, this ghetto was of considerable economic importance to the German war machine. Jews played an important role as workers in the textile factories there. For this reason, the deportation of Jews from the Lodz ghetto was only completed in August 1944.

The Warsaw ghetto was the largest ghetto established in Poland. Approximately 450,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 1.3 square miles that was the Warsaw ghetto. Other major ghettos were located in Krakow, Bialystok, Lvov, Lublin, Vilna, Kovno, Czestochowa, and Minsk. Conditions in the ghettos were appalling. For example, the majority of the apartments in the Warsaw ghetto were unheated during winter, and the Nazis determined that the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto could survive on an official food allocation of 300 calories per day (compared with 634 calories for the Poles and 2,310 for the Germans).

The Nazis ordered Jews to wear identifying badges or armbands with a yellow Star of David on them in the ghettos. Many Jews were also required to perform forced labor for the German Reich. The Nazi-appointed Jewish councils (Judenrat) and Jewish police maintained order within the ghettos and were forced by the Germans to facilitate deportations to the extermination camps.

The ghettos, however, were still full of life. Illegal activities, such as smuggling food or weapons, joining youth movements, or attending cultural events, often occurred without the approval of the Jewish councils (though in many cases the Jewish councils did in fact sponsor cultural activity).

Historian Emanuel Ringelblum, an inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto, founded a clandestine organization that aimed to provide an accurate record of events taking place in the ghetto. Ringelblum's project came to be known as the Oneg Shabbat ("Joy of the Sabbath"). Oneg Shabbat records were hidden in a series of milk cans that were buried in various areas of the ghetto. While only a few of these milk cans were recovered after the war, they proved to be an invaluable source documenting life in the ghetto and German policy toward the Jews of Poland.

Between July and mid-September 1942, the Germans deported at least 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. As a response to the deportations, several Jewish underground organizations created armed self-defense units known as the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or ZOB) and the Jewish Fighting Union (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy or ZZW). The Germans intended to begin deporting the remaining Jews in the Warsaw ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover. The renewal of deportations provoked an armed uprising within the ghetto.

Though organized military resistance was soon broken, individuals and small groups hid or fought the Germans--who had planned to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto in three days--holding out for a month, until May 16, 1943.The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe. It was also the largest and most successful Jewish uprising during the war and, as such, has served as a symbol of Jewish resilience and resistance to Nazi persecution.

After the Warsaw ghetto uprising, revolts occurred in Vilna, Bialystok, Czestochowa, and in several smaller ghettos. In August 1944, the Nazis completed the destruction of the last major ghetto in Lodz. In contrast, in Hungary, ghettoization did not begin until the spring of 1944 after the German invasion and occupation of the country. In less than three months, the Hungarian police, in coordination with the Germans, deported nearly 440,000 Jews from ghettos in Hungary to extermination camps. The majority were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

1935-1945: War

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

World War II provided the Nazis with a greatly expanded platform on which to carry out their racial ideology. This article examines the Holocaust in the context of World War II. It is reprinted courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.


On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. Within weeks, the Polish army was defeated, and the Nazis began their campaign to destroy Polish culture and enslave the Polish people, whom they viewed as "subhuman." Killing Polish leaders was the first step: German soldiers carried out the massacres of university professors, artists, writers, politicians, and many Catholic priests. To create new living space for the "superior" German race, large segments of the Polish population were resettled, and German families moved into the emptied lands. Other Poles, including many Jews, were imprisoned in concentration camps. The Nazis also "kidnapped" as many as 50,000 "Aryan"-looking Polish children from their parents and took them to Germany to be adopted by German families. Many of these children were later rejected as not capable of Germanization and were sent to special children's camps where some died of starvation, lethal injection, and disease.

As the war began in 1939, Hitler initialed an order to kill institutionalized, handicapped patients deemed "incurable." Special commissions of physicians reviewed questionnaires filled out by all state hospitals and then decided if a patient should be killed. The doomed were then transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austrian where specially constructed gas chambers were used to kill them. After public protest in 1941, the Nazi leadership continued this euthanasia program in secret. Babies, small children, and other victims were thereafter killed by lethal injection, pills, and forced starvation.

The "euthanasia" program contained all the elements later required for mass murder of European Jews and Roma (Gypsies): a decision to kill, specially trained personnel, the apparatus for killing by gas, and the use of euphemistic language like "euthanasia" that psychologically distanced the murderers from their victims and hid the criminal character of the killings from the public.

In 1940 German forces continued their conquest of much of Europe, easily defeating Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece. On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union and by late November, was approaching Moscow. In the meantime, Italy, Romania, and Hungary had joined the Axis powers led by Germany and were opposed by the main Allied powers (British Commonwealth, Free France, the United States, and the Soviet Union)

In the months following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, Jews, political leaders, Communists, and many Roma (Gypsies) were killed in mass shootings. Most of those killed were Jews. These murders were carried out at improvised sites throughout the Soviet Union by members of mobile killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) who followed in the wake of the invading German army. The most famous of these sites was Babi Yar, near Kiev, where an estimated 33,000 persons, mostly Jews, were murdered over two days. German terror extended to institutionalized handicapped and psychiatric patients in the Soviet Union; it also resulted in the death of more than three million Soviet prisoners of war.

World War II brought major changes to the concentration camp system. Large numbers of new prisoners, deported from all German-occupied countries, now flooded the camps. Often entire groups were committed to the camps, such as members of underground resistance organizations who were rounded up during a sweep across Europe under the 1941 Night and Fog decree. To accommodate the massive increase in the number of prisoners, hundred of new camps were established in occupied territories of eastern and western Europe.

During the war, ghettos, transit camps, and forced labor camps, in addition to the concentration camps, were created by the Germans and their collaborators to imprison Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and other victims of racial and ethnic hatred as well as political opponents and resistance fighters. Following the invasion of Poland, three million Jews were forced into approximately 400 newly established ghettos where they were segregated from the rest of the population. Large numbers of Jews were also deported from other cities and countries, including Germany, to ghettos and camps in Poland and German-occupied territories further east.

In Polish cities under Nazi occupation like Warsaw and Lodz, Jews were confined in sealed ghettos where starvation, overcrowding, exposure to cold, and contagious diseases killed tens of thousands of people. In Warsaw and elsewhere, ghettoized Jews made every effort, often at great risk, to maintain their cultural, communal, and religious lives. The ghettos also provided forced labor pool for the Germans. Many forced laborers (who worked in road gangs, in construction, or at other hard labor related to the German war effort) died from exhaustion or maltreatment.

Between 1942 and 1944, the Germans moved to eliminate the ghettos in occupied Poland and elsewhere, deporting ghettos residents to "extermination camps"--killing centers equipped with gassing facilities--located in Poland. After the meeting of senior German government officials in late January 1942 at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, informing senior government officials of the decision to implement "the final solution of the Jewish question," Jews from western Europe also were sent to killing centers in the East.

The six killing sites, chosen because of their closeness to rail lines and their location in semirural areas, were at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Chelmno was the first camp in which mass exterminations were carried out by gas piped into mobile gas vans. At least 152,000 persons were killed there between December 1941 and March 1943, and between June and July 1944. A killing center using gas chambers operated at Belzec, where about 600,000 persons were killed between May 1942 and August 1943. Sobibor opened in May 1942 and closed following a rebellion of prisoners on October 14, 1943; about 250,000 persons had already been killed by gassing at Sobibor. Treblinka opened in July 1942 and closed in November 1943. A revolt by prisoners in early August 1943 destroyed much of that facility. At least 750,000 persons were killed at Treblinka, physically the largest of the killing centers. Almost all of the victims at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were Jews; a few were Roma (Gypsies), Poles, and Soviet POWs. Very few individuals survived these four killing centers where most victims were murdered immediately upon arrival.

Auschwitz-Birkenau, which also served as a concentration camp and slave labor camp, became the killing center where the largest numbers of European Jews and Roma (Gypsies) were killed. After an experimental gassing there in September 1941--of 250 malnourished Polish prisoners and 600 Soviet POWs--mass murder became a daily routine. More than one million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 9 out of 10 of them Jews. In addition, Roma, Soviet POWs, and ill prisoners of all nationalities died in the gas chambers there. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary on more than 140 trains, overwhelmingly to Auschwitz. This was probably the largest single mass deportation during the Holocaust. A similar system was implemented at Majdanek, which also doubled as a concentration camp, and where between 70,000 and 235,000 persons were killed in the gas chambers or died from malnutrition, brutality, and disease.

The Germans carried out their systematic murderous activities with the help of local collaborators in many countries and the acquiescence or indifference of millions of bystanders. However, there were instances of organized resistance. For example, in the fall of 1943, the Danish resistance, with the support of the local population, rescued nearly the entire Jewish community in Denmark by smuggling them via a dramatic boatlift to safety in neutral Sweden. Individuals in many other countries also risked their lives to save Jews and other individuals subject to Nazi persecution. One of the most famous was Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, who played a significant role in some of the rescue efforts that saved tens of thousand of Hungarian Jews in 1944.

Resistance existed in almost every concentration camp and ghetto of Europe. In addition to the armed revolts at Sobibor and Treblinka, Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto led to a courageous uprising in April and May 1943, despite a predictable doomed outcome because of superior German force. In general, rescue or aid to Holocaust victims was not a priority of resistance organizations, whose principle goal was to fight the war against the Germans. Nonetheless, such groups and Jewish partisans (resistance fighters) sometimes cooperated with each other to save Jews. On April 19, 1943, for example, members of the National Committee for the Defense of Jews, in cooperation with Christian railroad workers and the general underground in Belgium, attacked a train leaving the Belgian transit camp of Malines headed for Auschwitz, and succeeded in assisting Jewish deportees to escape.

The U.S. government did not pursue a policy of rescue for the victims of Nazism during World War II. Like their British counterparts, U.S. political and military leaders argued that winning the war was the top priority and would bring an end to Nazi terror. Once the war began, security concerns, reinforced in part by anti-semitism, influenced the U.S. State Department (led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull) and the U.S. government to do little to ease restrictions on entry visas. In January 1944, President Roosevelt established the War Refugees Board within the U.S. Treasury Department to facilitate the rescue of imperiled refugees. Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York, began to serve as an ostensibly free port for refugees from the territories liberated by the Allies.

After the war turned against Germany, and the Allied armies approached German soil in late 1944, the SS decided to evacuate outlying concentration camps. The Germans tried to cover up the evidence of genocide and deported prisoners to camps inside Germany to prevent their liberation. Many inmates died during the long journeys on foot known as "death marches." During the final days, in the spring of 1945, conditions in the remaining concentration camps exacted a terrible toll in human lives. Even concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen, never intended for extermination, became death traps for thousands, including Anne Frank, who died there of typhus in March 1945. In May 1945, Nazi Germany collapsed, the SS guards fled, and the camps ceased to exist.

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1933-1939 Early Stages of Persecution

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Considering historical context helps us to understand the precedents and circumstances that contributed to the Holocaust. The following article examines German history between 1933 and 1939, paying close attention to the activities of the Nazi Party. It is reprinted courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.


On January 30, 1933, Adolph Hitler was named chancellor, the most powerful position in the German government, by the aged President Hindenburg, who hoped Hitler could lead the nation out of its grave political and economic crisis. Hitler was the leader of the right-wing National Socialist German Workers Party (called "the Nazi Party" for short). It was, by 1933, one of the strongest parties in Germany, even though--reflecting the country's multiparty system--the Nazis had won only a plurality of 33 percent of the votes in the 1932 elections to the German parliament (Reichstag).

Once in power, Hitler moved quickly to end German democracy. He convinced his cabinet to invoke emergency clauses of the constitution that permitted the suspension of individual freedoms of press, speech, and assembly. Special security forces—the Gestapo, the Storm Troopers (SA), and the SS--murdered or arrested leaders of opposition political parties (Communists, socialists, and liberals). The Enabling Act of March 23, 1933--forced through the Reichstag already purged of many political opponents--gave dictatorial powers to Hitler.

Also in 1933, the Nazis began to put into practice their racial ideology. The Nazis believed that the Germans were "racially superior" and that there was a struggle for survival between them and inferior races. They saw Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and the handicapped as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race," what they called the master race.

Jews, who numbered about 525,000 in Germany (less than one percent of the total population in 1933) were the principal target of Nazi hatred. The Nazis identified Jews as a race and defined this race as "inferior." They also spewed hate-mongering propaganda that unfairly blamed Jews for Germany's economic depression and the country's defeat in World War I (1914-1918).

In 1933, new German laws forced Jews out of their civil service jobs, university and law court positions, and other areas of public life. In April 1933, laws proclaimed at Nuremberg made Jews second-class citizens. These Nuremberg Laws defined Jews, not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves, but by the religious affiliation of their grandparents. Between 1937 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further and made daily life very difficult for them. Jews could not attend public schools; go to theaters, cinema, or vacation resorts; or reside or even walk in certain sections of German cities.

Also between 1937 and 1939, Jews increasingly were forced from Germany's economic life. The Nazis either seized Jewish businesses and properties outright or forced Jews to sell them at bargain prices. In November 1938, the Nazis organized a riot (pogrom), known as Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"). This attack against German and Austrian Jews included the physical destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores, the arrest of Jewish men, the vandalization of homes, and the murder of individuals.

Although Jews were the main target of Nazi hatred, the Nazis persecuted other groups they viewed as racially or genetically "inferior." Nazi racial ideology was buttressed by scientists who advocated "selective breeding" (eugenics) to "improve" the human race. Laws passed between 1933 and 1935 aimed to reduce the future number of genetic "inferiors" through involuntary sterilization programs: 320,000 to 350,000 individuals judged physically or mentally handicapped were subjected to surgical or radiation procedures so they could not have children. Supporters of sterilization also argued that the handicapped burdened the community with the costs of their care. Many of Germany's 30,000 Roma (Gypsies) were also eventually sterilized and prohibited, along with Blacks, from intermarrying with Germans. About 500 children of mixed African-German backgrounds were also sterilized. New laws combined traditional prejudices with the racism of the Nazis, which defined Roma by "race" and as "criminal and asocial."

Another consequence of Hitler's ruthless dictatorship in the 1930s was the arrest of political opponents and trade unionists and others whom the Nazis labeled "undesirables" and "enemies of the state." Some 5,000 to 15,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in concentration camps; under the 1935 Nazi-revised criminal code, the mere denunciation of a man as "homosexual" could result in arrest, trial, and conviction. Jehovah's Witnesses, who numbered at least 25,000 in Germany, were banned as an organization as early as April 1933, because the beliefs of this religious group prohibited them from swearing any oath to the state or serving in the German military. Their literature was confiscated, and they lost their jobs, unemployment benefits, pensions, and all social welfare benefits. Many Witnesses were sent to prisons and concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and their children were sent to juvenile detention homes and orphanages.

Between 1933 and 1936, thousand of people, mostly political prisoners, were imprisoned in concentrations camps, while several thousand German Roma were confined in special municipal camps. The first systematic round-up of German and Austrian Jews occurred after Kristallnacht, when approximately 30,000 Jewish men were deported to Dachau and other concentration camps, and several hundred Jewish women were sent to local jails. The wave of arrests in 1938 also included several thousand German and Austrian Roma.

Between 1933 and 1939, about half of the German-Jewish population and more than two-thirds of Austrian Jews (1938-1939) fled Nazi persecution. They emigrated mainly to the United States, Palestine, elsewhere in Europe (where many would be later trapped by Nazi conquests during the war), Latin America, and Japanese-occupied Shanghai (which required no visas for entry). Jews who remained under Nazi rule were either unwilling to uproot themselves or unable to obtain visas, sponsors in host countries, or funds for emigration. Most foreign countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, and France, were unwilling to admit very large numbers of refugees.


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Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Saadiah articulated Jewish creeds, Maimonides followed suit, and a group of 15th-century Spaniards continued the tradition.
Dr. Menachem Kellner
 
Both early Islam and [the medieval sectarian movement] Karaite Judaism adopted the tools of Greek philosophy and logic, which defined belief (in Greek, pistis) in explicitly propositional terms. Such religious movements could not be ignored by the Judaism of that era, and in their attempt to expound and defend Judaism in this context, medieval Jewish thinkers began to conceive of the nature of belief in propositional terms.


It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the first systematic exposition of Jewish beliefs was undertaken by Saadiah Gaon, in light of his exposure to the latest currents of Moslem thought in tenth‑century Baghdad and his involvement in the struggle against Karaism.

Once the term belief was defined in terms of specific propositions to be accepted or rejected, as opposed to an attitude of trust and reliance upon God and acceptance of his Torah, it was only a question of time until an attempt would be made to codify in creedal fashion the most important beliefs of Judaism. That two hundred years were still to elapse between the provocations of Saadiah's day and the enterprise of Maimonides is a tribute to the conservative nature of the Jewish tradition.

That Maimonides undertook the project at all is a tribute to his boldness.


Maimonides' Revolution

In 1168 Maimonides completed his first major work, the commentary on the Mishnah. In the course of this work Maimonides commented on Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1, which reads as follows:

"All Israelites have a share in the world to come, as it is written, 'Thy people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever; the branch of my plant­ing, the work of my hands, wherein I glory' (Isaiah 60:21). But the following do not have a share in the world to come: he who says that resurrection is not taught in the Torah, he who says that the Torah was not divinely revealed, and the epikoros…"

By way of interpreting this text, Maimonides composed a lengthy essay in which, among other things, he defines the various terms occurring in the mishnah under discussion. It was apparently by way of defining the term Israelites in this mishnah that Maimonides listed those thirteen beliefs that, in his estimation, every Jew qua Jew had to accept.

These beliefs, known as the Thirteen Principles, may be summarized as follows: (1) that God exists; (2) that God is one; (3) that God is incorporeal; (4) that God is ontologically prior to the world; (5) that God alone is a fit object of worship; (6) that prophecy occurs; (7) that the prophecy of Moses is superior to that of all other prophets; (8) that the Torah was revealed from heaven; (9) that the Torah will never be uprooted or altered; (10) that God knows the acts of human beings; (11) that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked; (12) that the Messiah will come; and (13) that the dead will be resurrected.



Maimonides concludes his discussion with the following peroration:

"When all these foundations [of the Torah] are perfectly understood and believed in by a person, he enters the community of Israel and one is obligated to love him and to act towards him in all the ways in which the Creator has commanded that one should act towards his brother, with love and fraternity. Even were he to commit every possible transgression, because of lust and because of being overpowered by the evil inclination, he will be punished according to his rebelliousness but he has a portion [in the World to Come]; he is one of the sinners of Israel. But if a man doubts any of these foundations, he leaves the community [of Israel], denies the fundamental, and is called sectarian, epikoros, and one 'who cuts among the plantings.' One is required to hate and destroy him. About such a person it was said, 'Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate Thee?' [Psalms 139:21]."

 Conditions for Jewishness, Salvation

Maimonides here defines dogmas as beliefs that are set down by the Torah and are both necessary and sufficient conditions for being a Jew and for earning a portion in the World to Come. Maimonides reiterated this list with little change in Chapter 3 of [Mishneh Torah] Hilkhot Teshuvah ("Laws of Repentance") referred to it in later writings, and even reworked portions of it toward the end of his life. Moreover, he unflinchingly accepts the halakhic implications of his position excluding heretics from the Jewish community (see Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Avodat Zarah 2:5; Hilkhot Edut 11:10; Hilkhot Shehitah 4:14, and especially Hilkhot Rozeah 4:10).

 Maimonides' teachings here include the following revolutionary claims:

Judaism has dogmas and accepting the dogmas of Judaism without doubt and hesitation is a necessary and sufficient condition for being considered a Jew and for achieving a portion in the World to Come; although one may transgress commandments out of weakness or inadvertence (ba‑shogeg) without excluding oneself from the community of Israel and the World to Come, disbelief in any one of the thirteen dogmas for any reason is heresy and costs one his membership in the community of Israel and his portion in the World to Come.

Heresy is heresy, whether it is intended as such or not.



Dogma Returns

In the two hundred years following the death of Maimonides almost no attention was paid to the question of dogma in Judaism. This may be a consequence of the fact that Maimonides' spiritual legacy split after his death.


Whereas Maimonides had sought to amalgamate two paths to human felicity‑-that of rational cognition [i.e. philosophy] and that of observance of the mitzvot‑‑followers emphasized one or the other of the two paths. Those who were halakhists had no reason to be interested in purely theological questions, while the philosophers were aloof to what they regarded as narrow theological issues and, therefore, neither group took up the question of dogma.

In fifteenth‑century Spain, however, we find that although Jewish philosophers as such had all but disappeared, in the face of a renewed theological attack by the Church upon Judaism‑-expressed in polemics, disputations, and forced attendance at conversionary sermons‑-and in the wake of the profound problems presented by forced converts (the Marranos), the Jewish communal and halakhic leadership was forced to take up the theological exposition and defense of Judaism and to deal with the principles of Jewish adhesion.

Given that the terms of the dispute were more or less dictated by Christianity and given the example of Maimonides, it was only natural that many fifteenth‑century Spanish Jewish thinkers once again emphasized the issue of dogma.

The fifteenth century witnessed a plethora of competing systems of dogmatics. Hasdai Crescas, Joseph Albo, and Isaac Abrabanel each composed complete books on the subject (the only such works written by Jews until the nineteenth century).

In addition, Simeon ben Zemah Duran, Abraham Bibago, and Isaac Arama all devoted systematic and extensive attention to the question of dogma in Judaism. The issue is also treated briefly in the writings of Abraham Shalom, Joseph Jabez, Yom Tov Lippman Muelhausen, Elijah del Medigo, and David ben Judah Messer Leon.


Defining Dogma

A number of interesting points emerge from the study of these writings. First, each of these authors defines dogma differently. Crescas, for example, regards dogmas as those beliefs that cannot consistently be denied if one believes in revelation; Albo defines Judaism in geometric terms and sees the dogmas of Judaism as its axioms; Arama understands the dogmas of Judaism to be those beliefs (coupled, in his view, with associated observances) that distinguish Judaism from other religions on the one hand and from philosophy on the other.

Second, despite the abundance of competing dogmatic systems, we do not find the rise of schismatic sects within fifteenth‑century Judaism, as opposed to Christianity, in which creedal differences have been associated with sectarianism. This may be an indication that attention to dogma was understood to be more of an intellectual exercise and response to the specific needs of the time than an actual attempt once and for all time to indite [i.e. set down in writing] the essential nature of Judaism.

Third, of all the thinkers who devoted serious attention to the question of dogma in Judaism after Maimonides, only two, Bibago and Abrabanel, explicitly allied themselves with Maimonides' claim that inadvertent heresy (ba‑shogeg) was actually heresy. All the other authors seem to adopt the traditional rabbinic conception that ignorance of the law and inadvertence are exculpatory factors.

Finally, only one thinker raised the question, does Judaism indeed have dogmas?

This was Isaac Abrabanel in his Rosh Amanah, in which he answered the question in the negative, insisting that all the beliefs and teachings of Judaism are equivalent. In effect he raised every teaching of Judaism to the level of dogma, requiring absolute doctrinal orthodoxy from every Jew on every issue.

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